Isolation study — Rodrigo Dyer

How might we understand how people interact with the world during COVID-19 lockdowns?

Role: user researcher, project manager

Skills: primary and secondary research, analysis and synthesis, interviewing, remote facilitation

Tools: SurveyMonkey, obvi, miro

Team: Julian Walker and me

An unforeseen event affected us more than we imagined

Context

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit countries deeply. Many of them mandated full or partial lockdown policies to protect their populations from the still unmeasured effects of the virus. Moreover, these consequences were not only physical, as many signaled, but the emotional and psychological toll of enduring a stressful situation in isolation.

Challenge

The brief of the project was to utilize different types of research techniques to dive into a topic of interest. Grasping individuals’ emotions and needs is difficult when done in person; doing so remotely, with less available methods and practices, is arduous. We decided to take the bull by the horns and study that same topic that was affecting the world and that moved our class to a remote format in the process.

We designed a diary study protocol which we uploaded to SurveyMonkey. We sent reminders to participants daily for 10 days.

As part of the study, we asked participants for photos at random moments of the day to see what they were doing.

We included a photo record of how a condensed day looked like for our participants in this context.

We analyzed the surveys, videos and interviews to determine patterns between participants answers.

We finished the “exit interview” with a card sorting exercise to determine which symptom of loneliness they endured.

We included a cultural probe in our study to do some comparative analysis on how participants experienced isolation in different countries.

Actions

We decided on the topic first and took it from research planning to insights. The project was managed in pairs. Our audience would be people living alone, as a couple and families in separate countries. The most relevant dimension was the research process and techniques. We had no client or partner.

We quickly jumped into secondary research to scope our project more effectively through learning more about isolation: Was it physical or cognitive? Transient or permanent? Self-determined or forced? We drew parallels between isolation and loneliness, formed a point of view of our subject and started defining our research questions. Later, we drafted our research plan: topic, hypothesis, remote research techniques, participant recruiting and project timeline.

Remote interviews and diary studies were our chosen methods, for which we designed guides and protocols. We recruited participants from two countries - USA and Peru - to add a cultural probe to the study. Also, we incorporated new tools to our repertoire - SurveyMonkey, obvi and miro - to follow up on day-to-day activities and, in the final week, to assess emotional distress through a card sorting exercise.

Results

The outcome was a comprehensive study that portrayed individuals’ behavior through their coping mechanisms, relationship building, use of communication and technology and their mental health. We delineated insights from our interviews and diary studies.

Perhaps the most fascinating part was the similarities and differences in the symptoms of chronic loneliness we evaluated through the cultural probe dimension. While our 7-week study did not incorporate prototyping, we could easily lay out how it could be replicated and inform decisions in local government, community-based organizations and healthcare companies.

Learnings

Professionalism was a huge part of it: how to maintain objectivity, build empathy, communicate ourselves with proper language, while enduring the same situation as our participants. Also, significant learnings from an end-to-end remote research project: research planning to insight presentation, gauging the flexibility of interview guides and diary studies, grounding our findings in frameworks that would push the conversation forward, etc. Last but not least, the technological suite we leveraged brought huge learning for a remote design future!

NEXT PROJECT >